


Disturbances

by orphan_account



Category: Wuthering Heights - Emily Brontë
Genre: Bad Writing, F/M, Love/Hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-21
Updated: 2018-07-21
Packaged: 2019-06-14 01:15:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15377481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "Whether it is right or advisable to create beings like Heathcliff, I do not know: I scarcely think it is." (Charlotte Brontë)There is beauty in happiness that is all too rare even in the world of fantasy.





	Disturbances

**Author's Note:**

> English is my second language.

As a reader of Wuthering Heights I am bothered by one thing in particular: the audience - be it literary or corporeal - never sees Heathcliff and Cathy when they are together and happy. Those moments are private, reserved for their knowledge and enjoyment.

Of all the things to bother me, right? As much as I should be, I am not disgusted by Heathcliff's violence. I am rather fascinated by it. He has a surprising propensity for cruelty, and, which is more, he's smart about it. He's inventive, he's brimming with creative imagination. I'm fine with that as long as it's fully contained within the pages of a book.

I am not bothered by Edgar Linton's fate, to be honest. He marries for what he believes is love, not knowing he has never met and will never meet the woman whose soul is made of the same stuff as his own. That would be something, wouldn't it? Then even his greatest enemy, who would gladly drink his blood, couldn't denounce Edgar's actions as arising from charity and a sense of duty - mere humanity.

I don't really mind Cathy's stupidity, either. Yes, stupidity. This woman is just ridiculous, so much so it makes me think Emily Brontë didn't like women in general. Just look at the way Cathy has everything planned out: she'll marry Edgar and help Heathcliff rise from poverty and dependence, and she pronounces she is Heathcliff. But no, she would not for the world talk her arrangements over with her soul mate, nor would she trust Heathcliff enough to weather the storm of Edgar's disapproval. She just has to fall ill immediately, and die, and drive her lover mad with grief. Talk about an overkill.

Nor am I moved by Isabella's fate. She makes just the kind of mistake I would make if I were her - luckily, my object of affection tends to be quite harmless, benign compared to Heathcliff. Isabella's error is that she sees the honourable, true Heathcliff, but fails to understand his good side has no power over the evil in him. His loving Cathy doesn't make him a better man, a compassionate man, in the sense that he does not perceive the world and the people in it as partaking in the same yearning which consumes him.

Allow me a word or two on the contradictions of Heathcliff's disposition. His amiable qualities - namely compassion, loyalty, generosity, tenderness and faithfulness - are reserved wholly and unconditionally for one human being. His good nature is quite separate from the rest of his personality and kept apart from it on purpose. Isabella just doesn't get it: her husband's centre of life is not within himself. In being united with Cathy, he would become relatively harmless only and simply because he would have no time to notice much else besides her. And being torn away from Cathy, losing her, is what transforms him into the bane of everyone's existence.

No, Isabella's lot doesn't bother me. What irks me is that very visible, very perceptible lack of happiness for the couple we all know and love (and occasionally despise and hate). I just want to see them together when neither of them is married, or dying, or dead, or acting aloof and self-important, or giving in to a fit of rage. I am about to have a fit of rage of my own and while I'm at it, I have a mind to say a few words to them all. (They're fictional characters, but who cares?)

Cathy, how on earth could you be so senseless as to shun the company of your self when you met him in another human form? Heathcliff, for crying out loud, did you have to run away? You really should have stayed and yelled at Cathy for accepting Edgar's proposal before she was married - not afterwards! (And why stop there?) Isabella, running away from that madhouse presided over by your personal tormentor was the only intelligent thing you ever did in your life, I am sorry to say! I'm not even going to lose any words on you, Edgar - you should have let your wife go - just go - she was never yours.

What the hell is wrong with this picture? Why isn't anybody happy? I need a happy ending, damn it, not in the great unknown, but in this world right now! Emily, what have you done?

Why write a fictitious story and not let the creatures of your imagination enjoy the benefits of your omnipotent influence? What would it be like if Cathy and Heathcliff lived together, married? They both have such a marvellous temper I can easily imagine shouting and things being thrown everywhere (but not at each other) three times a day. Then for a moment all is silent, all is still, and suddenly Cathy laughs at the idiocy of it all, Heathcliff joins in, and they are reconciled - they embrace.

The story of Wuthering Heights has a sorry beginning and a terrible end. And I will never know what Cathy would be like, round with Heathcliff's child, and I will never see his stern exterior relax in the safety of a comfortable life. And it disturbs me.


End file.
